After trying a few “craft” distilleries lately, I’m excited to dive into this NDP that sourced their whiskey from MGP. Craft distilleries can sometimes be a pleasant surprise, but lately their craftiness has left my tongue feeling like a guest enjoying the festivities at Guantánamo Bay. Now MGP isn’t always done well and can have some off flavors in certain bottles but they normally produce solid enjoyable whiskey which is why they basically exist in an infinite amount of names and bottle packages. So let’s find out how the fine folks at Smoke Wagon did with their MGP offering. The nose starts with chocolate covered pinwheel cookies followed by burnt orange peel and caramel cinnamon apple fritter then spices of nutmeg, cloves, light spearmint and roasted chestnuts with medium ethanol burn. The taste is a medium mouthfeel starting with a rich caramel covered s’mores sandwich followed by fruits of apple peel and orange zest before a medium spice before finally transitioning to barrel spices of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, light spearmint chewing gum and light oak with a medium ethanol burn. The finish is medium length with toasted marshmallow, walnuts, graham cracker, chocolate, orange, apple coffee cake and light oak spice. This isn’t a very complex whiskey, but a well-executed young bourbon that adds a toasted marshmallow flavor to traditional bourbon flavors with light rye that is incredibly easy to drink without any tannic bitterness or youthful astringency, but won’t result in any wow factor. Thankfully this MGP sourced bourbon was more of a camping adventure sitting by a nice fire while shoving a caramel square into the marshmallow prior to roasting than some heinous craft swill that should only be used to pull secrets out of dangerous villains by Jack Bauer. Doing a side by side with my Nulu toasted bourbon (also MGP) that was aged for 5 years and 2 months, this is basically the same whiskey but I get a little more rye on the Smoke Wagon. Since a Nulu costs $70 and the Smoke Wagon is closer to $50, I’m not sure the point of taking a chance to get the same, slightly better or worse whiskey in Nulu single barrel form for the extra $20. I’d just play it safe and grab the Smoke Wagon. A big thanks to @jonwilkinson7309 for the generous sample.